Jake's View | Canada's misguided pitch to rich Chinese immigrants
How very Canadian a piece of foolishness. The province of Quebec pitches wealthy mainlanders to immigrate to Montreal with promises of Canadian citizenship. But when they come they stay in Vancouver, where they wanted to be all along.
Most of the 30,000 rich Chinese who have recently moved to British Columbia told authorities they would settle elsewhere in Canada with the deception costing the province access to billions of dollars in loans.
How very Canadian a piece of foolishness. The province of Quebec pitches wealthy mainlanders to immigrate to Montreal with promises of Canadian citizenship. But when they come they stay in Vancouver, where they wanted to be all along.
You can't stop people from going anywhere they want to go in Canada once they become Canadian citizens and anyway, who wants to live through a Montreal winter?
However, the C$800,000 (HK$5.54 million) non-interest-bearing loans that mainland applicants must pay for the privilege are then turned over to the Quebec government because Quebec is where they said they would go, while British Columbia gets nothing.
Let's parse this silliness a little further. In the first place we have the typical misunderstanding of bureaucracies round the world that these wealthy immigrant programs actually create a net increase in new investment. They do not.